Zero Degrees od Separation

Friday night, after eating Thai Food and drinking much good beer at Great Water, I decided that I was craving ice cream (their portions were smaller than that usual gigantic Thai restaurant portions, so I was still a tad hungry.&#41 Avery said that he knew of a perfect place called Zero Degrees. Since we were on the border of North Beach, the Italian restaurant area of San Francisco, I figured that it would be some little hole-in-the-wall gelato place, but no! As we walked down the street and around the corner, there it was — a brightly-lit exposed brick architectural gem of a place. No matter what your mood was, this would be a cool place to go. Not only did they serve ice cream with a tuille cookie on top in little silver bowls and silver spoons that abstractly resembled delicate little trowels, but they also had tons of different types of teas and coffees and even alcoholic drinks like wine, beer and champagne. Their pastry counter was one of the pretty ones where you want one of everything, and the ice cream choices were flavors like Caramel and Malted Milk Chocolate. They had, like, 15 different magazines and newspapers all hanging on a little rack for customers to read as well as, and this is the best part of all, they had a big-screen TV playing the Cartoon Network! Oh joy! We asked the woman behind the counter how they managed to get the Cartoon Network there, but she had no idea. Oh well. The cartoons give it enough cool points for me to ignore the fact that it is attached to a new and pricey See and Be Seen Restaurant called "mc2," where we heard a tipsy young ingenue say as she exited said restaurant, "I just loo-o-ve places like that where I can be a voyeur and see who's sitting at which table!" Errrr…yeah. Somebody just might want to go ahead and put "dictionary" right at the top of their holiday wish list.